Automated tournaments are swiss-style tournaments for Guild Battles. These competitions take place three times daily, and are staggered to allow players from different timezones to take part. Competitors, by performing well through the automated rounds for a month, will have the opportunity to participate in the tournament at the end of each month which offer large amounts of Tournament Reward Points as prizes.

The tournament system interacts with the ladder rating system, but victories in the tournament reward greater ladder adjustment modifiers (K-values), with a K value of 25. Monthly tournaments have even greater rating modifier with K=50. The current ladder system has a K=15.

Since the 20 March 2008 update a guild or player will now lose K value (25 for daily, 50 for monthly) rating if the guild or player signs up for a tournament and forfeit the first round.

Be wary that rating change for win/losses is significantly higher than in a normal rated GvG match.

The tournaments are currently run as a swiss-system tournament where each instance has a maximum of 32 competitors. This means that there is a maximum of 5 rounds of play. There is currently a minimum requirement of 8 parties for tournaments. If more than the maximum number of competitors sign up for a tournament, then the tournament is split as necessary and two or more instances of the tournament are created. A future feature will be that the top 8 finishers, determined by the number of Match Points earned during the swiss rounds, are invited to continue playing in elimination playoffs to determine the results of the monthly tournament. Each round the pairing is random based on the win-loss statistics.

Two players must have been a member of their guild for 7 days. One of these players must be an officer. The remaining players may be a combination of up to six guests, henchmen, or members. This is automatically verified. Henchmen are restricted to a maximum of four.

Monthly tournaments require four guild members who have been a member of their guild for at least 7 days. No guests are allowed. Henchmen are restricted to a maximum of two.

Other players are allowed to substitute into later rounds. As long as the above requirements are maintained.

GvG has tournaments which run every 8 hours. Participants are required to register within an hour before the tournament. A countdown clock is provided in the staging area, the Guild Hall, showing the time until the match starts. The competitor must have joined before this timer completes or forfeit the match and leave the tournament.

All Automated Tournaments also have wait times between rounds to allow for guilds to finish playing matches.

Entry to the tournament is bought with Tournament Tokens which are purchased with Balthazar faction. If a competitor drops out of the tournament once it has started there is no refund. Any competitor that forfeits in the first round will not be considered for prize points, and they will also suffer a drop in rating.

With an odd number of competitors, the guild with the lowest amount of match points will receive a Bye, which means an automatic win for the tournament. If this happens at the beginning of the tournament a random competitor will be given the Bye.

When receiving a forfeit or a bye, no match is played, because of this there will be no change in rating.

Players are also rewarded with Tournament Reward Points which will give the player access to items with unique skins. The tournament agent Tolkano grants the rewards (see the PvP reward article for a list of rewards). Top placing players earn bonus reward points.

In the January 2009 monthly tournament, guilds Rebel Rising [rawr] and Survival Rate [zero] purposefully drew a match to advance in the tournament. The two guilds were punished by having their metallic cape trims removed temporarily. Similar behavior in the future may bring harsher punishments.

Prior to Wintersday 2013,[1][2] an 8 versus 8 Dwayna Vs Grenth version of the automated tournament (also known as the "snowball tournament") was available during Wintersday. The matches were played in the usual Dwayna Vs Grenth arena and tournament entry was free.